It is occasionally possible to see through the fog
of mysticism, superstition, lies, and the romantic, happy-faced, floating
butterfly vision of Abraham Lincoln that has been created by American court
historians over the past century. One place to begin is the gem of a book
by Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald entitled Lincoln
Reconsidered. In a particularly important passage Donald quotes Senator
John Sherman of Ohio, the brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman and
Republican Party powerhouse from the 1860s to the 1890s who was chairman
of the U.S Senate Finance Committee during the Lincoln administration,
on why the Republican Party nominated and elected Abraham Lincoln.

"Those who elected Mr. Lincoln expect
him . . . to secure to free labor its just right to the Territories of
the United States; to protect . . . by wise revenue laws, the labor of
our people; to secure the public lands to actual settlers . . . ; to develop
the internal resources of the country by opening new means of communication
between the Atlantic and Pacific."

Donald then claims to translate this statement "from
the politicianís idiom" into plain English. Lincoln and the Republican
Party "intended to enact a high protective tariff that mothered monopoly,
to pass a homestead law that invited speculators to loot the public domain,
and to subsidize a transcontinental railroad that afforded infinite opportunities
for jobbery."

This is what is so refreshing about David Donald, the
best and most honest of all the mainstream "Lincoln scholars." He understood
that "wise revenue laws" meant a 47 percent tariff on imports that would
plunder the Southern states especially severely; he understood that "free
labor" meant white labor, and protecting the white raceís "just right to
the territories" meant disallowing labor market competition from either
slaves or free blacks. At the time, the small number of free blacks in
the North had no real citizenship rights and some states, like Lincolnís
Illinois, had amended their constitutions to make it illegal for blacks
to move into the state.

Donald also understood that "developing the internal
resources of the country" was a euphemism for the colossal corruption that
would inevitably accompany massive federally-funded subsidies to railroad
corporations.

The financial powers behind the Republican Party in
1860 were the Northern railroad barons, Northern manufacturers who wanted
protectionist tariffs to protect them from competition, and Northern bankers
and investors like Jay Cooke who wanted to use their political connections
to make a killing financing a transcontinental railroad (among other schemes,
such as central banking). They decided at the Chicago Republican National
Convention of 1860 that Abraham Lincoln was the perfect political front
man for their corrupt, mercantilist agenda.

The Great Railroad Lobbyist

From the time he entered politics in 1832, Abraham
Lincoln aspired to such a position. That is why he became a Whig, the party
of the moneyed elite. Lincoln was one of the most money- and power-hungry
politicians in American history. (Indeed, this would seem to be a prerequisite
for anyone who is capable of being elected president).

As soon as he entered the Illinois legislature he led
his local delegation in a successful Whig Party effort to appropriate some
$12 million in taxpayer subsidies for railroad and canal-building corporations.
In his landmark book, Lincoln and the Railroads, first published in 1927
and reprinted in 1981 by Arno Press, John W. Starr, Jr. noted how one of
Lincolnís colleagues in the legislature said "He seemed to be a born politician.
We followed his lead . . . " And they followed Lincoln down a road that
would nearly bankrupt the state of Illinois. The $12 million was squandered:
Almost no projects were completed with it; much of the money was stolen;
and the taxpayers of Illinois were put deep into debt for years to come.

Lincolnís "internal improvements" fiasco in Illinois
promised to build "a railroad from Galena in the extreme northwestern part
of the state." Above St. Louis, in Alton, "three [rail]roads were to radiate";
"There was also a road to run from Quincy . . . through Springfield"; another
one "from Warsaw . . . to Peoria"; and yet another "from Pekin . . . to
Bloomington" (Starr, pp. 25Ė26). The first road mentioned was to become
the Illinois Central, which would later employ Lincoln for more than a
decade as one its top lawyers.

Lincoln and the Whigs saw to it that "the Assembly
also voted wildly and injudiciously in the matter of banking legislation,"
urging the legislature to print paper money to help finance what his personal
secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, would later say was "a disaster to the state."
Lincolnís law partner, William Herndon, described the whole debacle as
"that sanguine epidemic of financial and industrial quackery which devastated
the entire community" (p. 28). The whole scheme was eventually abandoned,
and taxes were raised sharply on the hapless Illinois taxpayers to pay
off the debt.

The 1837 internal improvements debacle in Illinois
may have been a disaster for the public, but it helped catapult a young
Abraham Lincoln into position as one of the top Ė if not the top Ė lawyer/lobbyists
in the country for the railroad corporations.

By 1860 the Illinois Central Railroad was one of the
largest corporations in the world. In a company history, J. G. Drennan
noted that "Mr. Lincoln was continuously one of the attorneys for the Illinois
Central Railroad Company from its organization [in 1849] until he was elected
President" (Starr, p. 58). He was called on by the companyís general counsel
to litigate dozens of cases. He was such a railroad industry "insider"
that he often rode in private cars and carried a free railroad pass, courtesy
of the Illinois Central.

Lincoln successfully defended the Illinois Central
against McLean County, Illinois, which wanted to tax the corporation, for
which he was paid $5,000, an incredible sum for a single tax case in the
1850s. The man who paid him the fee was George B. McClellan, the vice president
of the Illinois Central who in 1862 would become the commanding general
of the Army of the Potomac and, later, Lincolnís opponent in the 1864 election.
Starr explains the dishonest ruse that was apparently used by Lincoln and
McClellan to trick the Illinois Centralís New York City-based board of
directors to go along with such an unprecedented fee to a "country lawyer"
from Illinois.

McClellan would formally refuse to pay such a large
fee, making his directors happy. Then Lincoln would sue the Illinois Central
for the fee. But when Lincoln went to court over the fee (armed with depositions
from other Illinois lawyers that such astronomical fees were perfectly
appropriate!) no lawyers for the company showed up and he won by default.
Proof that this was all a ruse lies in the fact that "Lincoln . . . continued
to handle [the Illinois Centralís] litigation afterwards, the same as he
had done before" (p. 79).

By the late 1850s, writes Starr, it was widely known
that "Lincolnís close relations with powerful industrial interests" are
"always potent and present in political counsels" (p. 67). In todayís language,
he was the equivalent of a powerful, rich and politically influential "K
Street lobbyist." He often traveled "with a party of officials of the Illinois
Central company. He rode in a private car, on his own pass furnished him
in his capacity as attorney for the company." This "greatly impressed some
of the young Republican leaders . . ." This was the real Lincoln, and it
is diametrically opposed to the image of the modest, backwoods "rail splitter"
that the court historians have created.

In a masterpiece of understatement, Starr comments
that "Lincolnís rise [in politics] was coincident with that of the railroads"
(p. 80). In addition to working for the Illinois Central, Lincoln also
represented the Chicago and Alton, Ohio and Mississippi, and Rock Island
Railroad corporations. As soon as the Chicago and Mississippi Railroad
was built, he was appointed as the local attorney for that company as well.
By 1860 Lincoln was the most prominent attorney/lobbyist the railroad industry
had. He was so prominent that the New York financier Erastus Corning offered
him the job of general counsel of the New York Central Railroad at a salary
of $10,000 a year, an incredible sum at the time. Lincoln turned down the
offer after agonizing over it.

Lincoln also used his status as one of the top political
insiders within the railroad industry to engage in some very lucrative
real estate investments. On one of his trips in a private rail car accompanied
by an entourage of Illinois Central executives Lincoln "decided to go to
Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he had some real estate investments" (p. 152).
"Shortly before his trip to Council Bluffs," writes Starr, "Abraham Lincoln
had purchased several town lots from his fellow railroad attorney, Norman
B. Judd, who had acquired them from the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad.
Council Bluffs at this time was a frontier town, containing about fifteen
hundred people" (p. 195). To this day, this land in Council Bluffs, Iowa
is known as "Lincolnís Hill."

Why invest in real estate in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
of all places? Why not Chicago or even Springfield, the state capital?
Because Lincoln the political insider knew that there was a very high likelihood
that 1) the federal government would eventually subsidize a transcontinental
railroad; and 2) the starting point for that railroad could well be in
the vicinity of Council Bluffs. If so, the value of his real estate holdings
would be wildly inflated and he would make a killing.

Indeed, the 1860 Republican Party Platform contained
a sixteenth plank that read: "That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively
demanded by the interests of the whole country; the Federal Government
ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction . . ."
As the partyís nominee, Lincoln pledged his wholehearted support of this
plank. In the interests of "the whole country," of course.

When he became president legislation was immediately
proposed, in a special legislative session called by Lincoln in July of
1861, to create the taxpayer-subsidized Union Pacific Railroad. "There
was no firmer friend of the Union Pacific bill than the President himself,"
writes Starr. (In contrast, most mainstream "Lincoln scholars" make the
preposterous assertion that he had nothing to do with such legislation).
The bill was passed in 1862 and it gave the president the power to appoint
all the directors and commissioners and, more importantly, "to fix the
point of commencement" of the Union Pacific Railroad. And guess where Lincoln
chose to fix the point of commencement of the railroad. He "fixed the eastern
terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad . . . at Council Bluffs, Iowa" (p.
202). His financial gains must have dwarfed Corningís $10,000 salary offer.
During the Grant administrations dozens of prominent people would go to
federal prison for such criminal self-dealing but Lincoln, the ringleader
of the whole enterprise, has up to now escaped scrutiny.

In addition to lining his own pockets with this piece
of legislation, proving to his well-heeled supporters that he was indeed
"one of them," the legislation was essentially the Mother of all Political
Payoffs. One hundred fifty-eight of the prominent Northern bankers, industrialists,
and railroad barons who had supported Lincolnís political career were appointed
as "commissioners." As Dee Brown wrote in Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow:
The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads, when Lincoln signed the
bill creating the Union Pacific he "assured the fortunes of a dynasty of
American families . . . Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons,
Trowbridges, Langworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords, Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells,
and dozens of others . . ." (p. 49).

What does all this have to do with Lincolnís war "to
save the union"? The answer is, "everything." The official reason for the
war that was given by both Lincoln and the U.S. Congress was "to save the
union." But Lincoln inherited no "perpetual union." The union of the founding
fathers was a voluntary compact of the states. The states delegated certain
powers to the central government as their agent, but retained sovereignty
for themselves. Secession was considered a legitimate option by political
and opinion leaders from all sections of the country in 1860, as I document
quite extensively in The Real Lincoln.

In his First Inaugural Address Lincoln promised that
he had no intention of disturbing Southern slavery, and that even if he
did it would be unconstitutional to do so. In the same speech he pledged
his support of a proposed constitutional amendment that had just passed
the U.S. Senate two days earlier (after passing the House of Representatives)
that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering
with Southern slavery. In other words, he was perfectly willing to see
Southern slavery persist long after his own lifetime.

But on the issue of taxation he was totally uncompromising.
The Republican Party was about to more than double the average tariff rate
(from 15 percent to over 32 percent), and then increase it again to 47
percent. The Morrill Tariff passed the House of Representatives in the
1859 session, before Lincolnís nomination and before any serious movement
toward secession. In the First Inaugural Lincoln clearly stated that it
was his obligation as president to "collect the duties and imposts," but
beyond that "there will be no invasion of any state." He was telling the
South: "We are going to economically plunder you by doubling and tripling
the tariff rate (the main source of federal revenue at the time), and if
you refuse to collect the higher tariffs, as the South Carolinians did
with the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations," there will be an invasion. That
is, there will be mass killing, mayhem, and total war.

Why was the tariff so important Ė even more important
than the issue of slavery in the eyes of Abraham Lincoln? Because tariff
revenues comprised about 90 percent of federal revenue, and if the Southern
states seceded they would no longer pay the federal tariff. All the grandiose
plans of building a transcontinental railroad with taxpayer subsidies and
creating a continental empire would be destroyed, and along with them the
political career of Abraham Lincoln and, possibly, the Republican Party
itself. The union was "saved" geographically but destroyed philosophically
by the waging of total war on the civilian population of the South, a war
in which nearly one half of the adult white male population was either
killed or mutilated.

Three months after the war, Generals Grant, Sherman
and Sheridan would commence a twenty-five year campaign of ethnic genocide
against the Plains Indians to make the American West safe for the subsidized
transcontinental railroads. Sherman (who was also a railroad industry-related
real estate investor) explicitly stated that the purpose of eradicating
the Plains Indians was to make sure that they did not stand in the way
of the government-subsidized railroads.

By ignoring this true history of how a modestly successful
trial lawyer from Illinois came to be the nominee of the moneyed elite
that ran the Republican Party in 1860, Americaís court historians have
railroaded the public into believing a fairy tale version of their own
history. The popular notion that the Republican Partyís early leaders were
Selfless Humanitarians is as big a lie as has ever been told.

October 1, 2003

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of
the LRC #1 bestseller, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln,
His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House, 2002) and professor
of economics at Loyola College in Maryland.

Thomas DiLorenzo Archives at Mises.orgReally Learn About the Real LincolnNow there is a study guide and video to accompany
Professor DiLorenzo's great work, for homeschoolers and indeed anyone interested
in real American history.http://www.fvp.info/reallincolnlr/